FONTANA – Jamie McMurray, winner of the year’s two biggest races on the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series schedule but not in the Chase for the championship, added another piece to that perplexing situation Friday at Auto Club Speedway.

McMurray pushed his Chip Ganassi Racing Chevrolet around the Fontana track at 185.285 mph to win his second straight pole. McMurray, sponsored by McDonald’s for the Pepsi Max 400, also won the front spot for the Auto Club 500 in February.

“That’s all I had,” McMurray said. “I worked really hard for my lap. The track has a lot of speed in it, but it’s really slick. Just coming to the green (flag) you know what you have when you drive in to turn three. You can tell what you have is going to be good or bad.”

With the lap, McMurray joined Kurt Busch as the only driver to sweep both poles in a season. Busch turned the trick in 2006.

“This is a really good track,” said McMurray, the second-

leading money winner this year behind Jimmie Johnson but 14th in points. “It’s great to be able to race on because it’s so wide.”

Elliott Sadler will be on the outside of McMurray in Richard Petty Motorsports Ford at 184.407. He was one of five non-Chase drivers among the six fastest in qualifying, posting his second top-10 start of the year and fifth in 19 races at ACS.

In his previous eight years on the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series before this season, McMurray had won three poles. The Chip Ganassi Racing driver, winner of the Daytona 500 and Brickyard 400, captured his fourth pole of 2010.

“We really didn’t focus on qualifying today,” McMurray said. “We worked on developing some stuff for later in the year and for next year. Honestly, it’s a completely different setup than even what we were on the pole with here in spring.”

McMurray has been on the outside of the Chase looking in for several seasons.

“When it was guys in the Chase, I was the 11th guy like two years in a row,” McMurray said. “Then they made it 12 and I was like, `Great.’ Now I’m the 14th guy.

“It’s all about being consistent and, unfortunately for us at the beginning of the year, we had really fast cars, but we just weren’t consistent enough.

“If they want to have a wild card, I don’t think anyone would have an issue with that. I don’t know that 10 years anyone would have thought that we would have had a playoff system. I guess you never know.”

Sadler was the winner of the inaugural fall race at Fontana in 2004, but has not visited the winner’s circle since the Labor Day Sunday race.

“It was great lap for us,” he said. “Everybody knows we need this for our team. I’m gonna be honest with you, the reason we qualified second today is 100 percent (crew chief) Todd Parrott. He’s put so much effort and so much hard work into our programs the last couple of months. This is one of our newer (2010) and they’ve done a lot of work preparing the body, getting it the car as light as we can and doing a lot of cool stuff.”

The reason for the effort back at the shop was that it was the same chassis Sadler crashed on the first lap of the Brickyard 400.

“We re-did it,” he said. “It’s been good since we unloaded. We felt really comfortable coming into this race this weekend and that’s great way to get started off.

“I’m just very proud of my guys, they made me look pretty good today.”

Sadler, whose plans for 2011 are still uncertain, said there is still no news on that front but “we’re working hard on it.”

Johnson, the Chase points leader, was satisfied with his effort.

“That was the fastest lap we ran over the weekend so far, so directionally we did everything right and a top 10 starting spot is great,” he said.

Denny Hamlin, second in the points, fared worse. He qualified 34th but Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Kyle Busch finished 16th in his Toyota.

Casey Mears made Sunday’s grid by qualifying 12th, the best of the go-fast or go-home set. David Gilliland, the former Chino Hills resident, qualified 32nd.

“It was a really good day,” said Mears, driving the Germain Racing Toyota. “It’s always good to have days like that. We had days like Dover where we were chasing it so much and then to come here and be as close as we were was big. We had a good lap.

“Unfortunately, being a go or go-home guy, you may go home but the fortunate part of it is you get to go late and the track is a little bit faster and that definitely helped in our favor too.”

Lou Brewster is a nationally recognized motorsports journalist who has staffed NASCAR and NHRA events since 1969. Has also staffed high school football, in five different states, since 1967. Has won several national awards in writing and breaking news.

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